Without Remorse
by Thanfiction
Summary: In time of war, the lines of right and wrong, what is regretted and what is a matter of pride become razor-thin. WARNINGS for incest, sexuality, language. NOT part of the DAYDverse.


This was written for the Drunken Fanfiction Contest on Livejournal after 12oz of good Irish whiskey and 1 1/2 bottles of Guinness draught. I was HAMMERED, so I am SO not responsible for this, especially as I have neither spellchecked nor betaed, as per the rules. These are not characters, a pairing, an era, a genre, or a style that's normal for me, but hey, if I did write what I write, it would have defeated the purpose of an anonymous contest, because they'd all know who I was, so I had to write what I don't write so it was just the writing, right? Made sense to ME, anyway.

* * *

He did not regret going in.

His shoulder still ached from the last time, the skin still too tight and too new, too shiny and too pink, but it didn't matter. His shirt was still on, as much as the scrap of deliberately shredded and three-sizes-too-small fabric could ever have been called a shirt, and the sheen of sweat streaking the sheen of glitter distorted everything yet another step beyond the alcohol that already made the stained floor spin beneath his heavy boots and cast an earthy taint of malt over the raw biological musk of a hundred writhing bodies and the cloying space-age sweet-sours of clothing that had never been natural and makup melting from faces that didn't want to be.

He did not regret finding her.

She was a shadow in three dimensions, apocalyptic post-modern art for an era spiraling itself apart at the seams, black on black on black, defined by all the things that were missing: by the holes in stockings and the nipples outlined hard with no bra, hair a tempest, eyes without a soul behind them, by the insatiable something where that soul should have been.

He did not regret approaching her.

Her arms writhed wire-corded above her head, the dark lines unabashed on the colorless skin, and his circled her, hands flat on her slick and bared stomach, pushing roughly down and pulling her in so that their hips ground together in atonal counterpoint to the shrieks of the singer warning that the world was coming to an end under their fucking, pampered, oblivious, bourgeoisie noses. Cassandra without even knowing it, howling the truth ignorantly above the death-omen banshee wail of the synthesizers.

He did not regret challenging her.

"Almost worth dipping yourself in so much Muggle filth…." His voice rumbled against her ear, the only way you could hear anything at all, teeth nipping at the hook of her earring, leaving a mark, not bothering not to, almost wishing it bled. One hand around her ribs, crushing a breast back against her heavy breathing, the other between her legs, rubbing hard through the thin leather, feeling heat beneath and a moisture seeping through the stitching that was too viscous for sweat alone. He smashed his thumb against the ridge of her pubic bone, trying to catch the clit, make it hurt, knowing she'd love it, hating himself.

He did not regret accusing her.

She didn't answer, but her teeth reflected the dizzying lights as though already bloodstained as she grinned, twisting, her eyes aflame with nothing human as she licked her lips in a smear of bruised lipstick. Her nails cut into his ass; she was tall and taller in the boots, blurring them together from hip to throat, and the hand from her chest now fisted her hair, yanking her face to his. "How many? They think it's part of the light show, and –"

He did not regret restraining himself.

"Overdoses are so fucking tragic. Just –" He felt it shudder her body, buckle her knees for a single throbbing drumbeat as she moaned, bitch in heat, neck hollowing at her collarbones, an eyeblink of green among the other flashes somewhere behind him, but it was red that flared behind his eyes. The hate, the horror, the disgust, so easy to unleash the power in his own body and snap her neck, but that wasn't an option, not really, not when it had been this hard to find her through the maze of whispered, nightmare-fueled rumors.

He did not regret not restraining himself completely.

Instead he twisted his wrist almost hard enough, instead he pinched harder than that, instead he thrust forward and didn't look where the green had flashed. "You like it, don't you?"

He did not regret indulging her.

The yes was the hiss of a serpent in an infant's cradle, he felt the brazen magic flash at his groin, and her hand was around him, the netting across her palm rough-knit against hands that had no right to be smooth or soft. He could feel the hard, thin wood against his back, the point digging against the muscles as they bunched and twisted beneath the skin along his spine, pressing the outline of the weapon in her other hand, what could any moment snap green again and he'd never even know. But he didn't move away, he let her. He let her, and if there was anything like heaven in this hell, let it help him, because the nerves still lit and fired as if they were the hands of an angel that hadn't been born fallen.

He did not regret seducing her.

Choking her mouth with his tongue, sucking to mark and pinching to gasp, zipper purring soundless beyond the noise that never stopped, fingers beneath leather and nothing else, between wet and hot and bare. His trousers too tight to slide down his thighs though they were open now, and if no one cared who died, then this was nothing, nothing more than what they didn't care themselves was probably happening around them, except there was no room to worry who watched the web when the shining black legs circled your waist and your lips found the red hourglass marked at her breast...

He did not regret fucking her.

The salt of his sweat burned the trails she left in his back, her hair streaked mad brushstrokes out of the blood from his teeth on her shoulder, and his arms were trembling because her feet never touched the floor, but it was almost all the way in and out, lifting and thrusting and pushing and slamming until she was screaming and the wand sparked what he knew would scar against the back of his shoulder, but at least it wasn't green. Le petit mort only.

He did not regret hexing her.

She was still shuddering in his arms, sucking breaths past trembling and smeared lips, and as her eyes raised to his, there was a moment, an instant that was so much the most obscene thing he had ever seen in his life that his own wand was out at once, pulled from the holster against his ribs that had been charmed to be undetectable to any other, and never perhaps had a spell been so hard tested. It was sick and wrong and churned the back of his throat to acid because for that heartbeat, they were the eyes of a woman. Not even a glimpse into could be or could have been, it was that by which he held her culpable as her body clenched and released a second time, sliding off of him and leaving them both exposed when his arms lifted away to refuse all grace to her fall.

He did not regret disarming her.

For all of its power, sleek and vicious as its owner, it was nothing more than a polished stick with a strand of dead animal's flesh in the center, and it made the sound of a cracking bone beneath his boot. Tiny splinters littered among the glitter on the floor, and his eyes could follow it for less than a second before the feet of the crowd kicked it away to vanish in the maelstrom where its victims still lay equally unknown and ignored. He knew she would get another, but for tonight, it was silenced. Maybe even for two or three days, and with her, how many lives was that?

He did not regret leaving her.

Her trousers unzipped and bunched at her hips, her legs tangled open among the pounding waves of wantonness that flowed around the cavernous, claustrophobic soundscape, strands of white still scattered across wet black leather, one reddened nipple semicircled half-seen at the torn neck of her shirt. Helpless, an invitation to every base and depraved sub-human desire that ran so rampant here, but there was no thought of looking back. If a mere demon tried to take her now, let that be the poor bastard's own problem. Besides, hadn't they always said that one should keep to their own kind?

He did not regret doing it all over again.

The next one wasn't a Death Eater, but her husband was, and no one knew better than a cuckolding wife every time he would be gone for a meeting or mission, how far away he would be going, who he would be with, and when they would be expected back. There was no ear more ready than that of a lover for every detail of the other man's weaknesses and inadequacies, and no arms more willing than those younger and stronger and so much more beautiful on the outside to catch and swallow every drop of treason spilled onto the marital bed between the sighs and screams.

He did not regret using himself.

This was not a game, not a glorious fantasy of schoolboys. It was real, as real as the Auror's badge on James' chest and the scars that sleeved his right arm; as real as the blood that trailed the entry hall and up the stairs when Remus came back with his eyes shining pride past the pain. Because at least it could be used. They could all be used, in all their shades and forms, in whatever they became. White knight Dorian Gray of the House of Black.

He did not regret facing the others.

That she was blood was nothing, it was blood he had long ago sworn away, would have slit from his veins if it were possible. And they had all done worse and same in their own ways, long ago abandoning the happy fantasies that an undeclared war could be even as clean as the morass of one that was ostensibly sanctified. You kill and you lie, you fuck and you promise and do your torture with a broken bottle so that you don't cross the invisible line of doing dark magic and use your dearest loved ones as bait for those who aren't worth drawing poisoned breath, you feel your heart nearly stop at the unexpected sound of a child's laughter in a public park where you're standing over the corpse of a so goddamned close, your most secret shames fuel your proudest victories, and your curses become your badges of honor. And then tomorrow, if it isn't over, however many of you remain do it all again.

He did not regret getting smashed.

If it became a problem later, then at least that meant there was a later, and now it meant he could sleep. Beauty sleep, so necessary for tomorrow and all over again, unless they woke up into their wildest fantasies and it had ended, but that was a fool's hope, as hard as they were fighting. Because they were losing, losing more every day, more that didn't come back, more empty chairs, more empty platitudes, more empty victories, more empty bottles.

He regretted trusting someone to listen.

Too loose his tongue, too late the hour, too exquisite his detail, too real the horror in the eyes of the friend who had always understood theory so perfectly in everything. Usually, it was the theories that wove their tactics on the petty, day-to-day levels that Dumbledore couldn't afford to follow, that supplied rendezvous and backups, acquired safe houses and did the ten thousand acts of heroism that weren't quite on the front lines but still close enough to feel the spells crinkle the hair at the back of your neck from those who were. This time, though, he could see that Peter felt more than theory, and when he found out he had broken, there was no question whose confessions had honed his fear to an edge that could sever gold and scarlet.

That, he regretted.

THE END


End file.
